Towards Thymus Organoids Made From Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

The adaptive immune system depends upon the thymus. Thymocyte cells are generated in the bone marrow and then migrate to the thymus, where they mature into T cells through a complex process of training and selection. The thymus is largest during development, up until the end of childhood. At that point it shrinks dramatically, and then the remainder undergoes a slow atrophy over the rest of a lifespan. In older people, the much reduced volume of active thymic tissue diminishes the supply of new T cells, leading to an adaptive immune system increasingly made up of broken, misconfigured, exhausted, and senescent cells. Finding ways to regrow the thymus is an ongoing endeavor, a number of companies taking a variety of approaches. Some are looking for small molecules to trigger regulatory genes governing thymic activity; some intend to deliver cells that home to the thymus and encourage new growth; gene therapies have been explored, involving a search for ways to target delivery systems to the thymus; and researchers are investigating the construction of new thymic tissue for transplant. You may be familiar with the work of Lygenesis and associated scientists in building thymus organoids that can be transplanted into lymph nodes. Today's open access paper is an example of this last sort of work, focused on being able to build thymic organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells. This offers the possibility of universal thymic tissues, built from cell lines engineere...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs